February 2015

Feb 25, 2013

Meant to post this yesterday, remembered this afternoon as I was cramming some chips into my face and the phrase "mouth feel" popped into my mind. Mmm, mouth feel.

So why are the diabetes and obesity and hypertension numbers still spiraling out of control? It’s not just a matter of poor willpower on the part of the consumer and a give-the-people-what-they-want attitude on the part of the food manufacturers. What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive...

...the next question was how to expand the [Lunchables] franchise, which they did by turning to one of the cardinal rules in processed food: When in doubt, add sugar...Eventually, a line of the trays, appropriately called Maxed Out, was released that had as many as nine grams of saturated fat, or nearly an entire day’s recommended maximum for kids, with up to two-thirds of the max for sodium and 13 teaspoons of sugar.

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"Food in History", from 1971 by Reay Tannahill, notes that as American corporations began to mass produce and mass market sugar, recipes in American cookbooks saw a significant increase in the amount of sugar they called for. You can trace the increased sugar use in specific recipes published over the years in succeeding editions of the same cookbook.